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  • Electricity Market Design 5: Summary of blog series

    July 24, 2019

    Electricity Market Design 5: Summary of blog series

    Blog 5: Market Design Issues for a smart, flexible, sustainable and secure energy system: Summary blog Thomas Pownall 24th July 2019 The UK’s electricity market design is outdated. Our current policies and rules dictate how our market operates and reflects a legacy of an electricity system which we need to depart from in order to achieve our decarbonisation targets but, also, to run a cost effective electricity system. We now have the scope to transition to a 21st century electricity market design, one which supports the deployment of renewable technologies, storage, improved energy efficiencies and

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  • Electricity Market Design 4: Proposed design

    July 24, 2019

    Electricity Market Design 4: Proposed design

    Blog 4: Market Design Issues for a smart, flexible, sustainable and secure energy system: Proposed design Thomas Pownall 24th July 2019 The vision As mentioned Blog 2 there are several academics who have proposed their own electricity market design, each with their own vision and goals. These designs have intended outcomes with subsequent winners and losers. We argue that the proposed electricity market design in this blog suits an energy efficient system based on renewables, storage, DSR and interconnection, fully utilising distribution resources.  The proposal consciously enables these resources but does not exclude ‘traditional’ supply. It

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  • Electricity Market Design 3: The institutional glue to link markets & networks

    July 24, 2019

    Electricity Market Design 3: The institutional glue to link markets & networks

    Blog 3: Market Design Issues for a smart, flexible, sustainable and secure energy system: The institutional glue to link markets and networks By Thomas Pownall  24th July 2019* A fit for purpose inter-related set of market designs (i.e. for electricity, heat etc.) are only one key dimension of a successful energy system transformation. These markets are not sufficient by themselves. If we are to achieve our decarbonisation targets, we (i.e. the UK) need a suitable institutional framework governing the energy system, of which market design issues are just one part. IGov has set out this

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  • Electricity Market Design 2: the ‘rules of the game’ and why they no longer work

    July 23, 2019

    Electricity Market Design 2: the ‘rules of the game’ and why they no longer work

    Blog 2: Market Design Issues for a smart, flexible, sustainable and secure energy system: The ‘rules of the game’ and why they no longer work By Thomas Pownall  23rd July 2019 As argued in the first blog, electricity market design can be considered as a social construct, representing interwoven policies and interests which not only dictate how actors perform within the electricity market, but also offer a glimpse into the historic scenario for which the design was originally proposed. In this blog we explore several issues present in our energy system due to the current

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  • Electricity Market Design: Setting the Scene

    July 23, 2019

    Electricity Market Design: Setting the Scene

    Blog 1 Electricity Market Design Issues for a smart, flexible, sustainable and secure energy system: Setting the Scene By Thomas Pownall  23rd July 2019 Many countries have increased their renewable energy generation over the last few decades. This is a great achievement to date, but simply adding capacity is not enough to achieve a more sustainable energy system. The governance of many aspects of our energy system needs to be reconsidered, including placing the consumer at the heart of the energy system. This blog series is centred on electricity market design, rules and incentives. It

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  • MOOC: Reflections on Energy Governance for Rapid Decarbonisation

    July 16, 2019

    MOOC: Reflections on Energy Governance for Rapid Decarbonisation

    Transforming Energy Systems – why governance matters Reflections on Week 4 – Energy Governance for Rapid Decarbonisation 16th July 2019 Week 4 started off with an enthusiastic challenge from one participant: “I’m looking forward to this week. I can’t see how you’re going to fit everything in though!” We are hoping we managed to deliver on this! Vulnerable groups & equity An early theme emerging was the question of how governance could protect poorer households. Some felt that it was inevitable that poorer households would spend a larger proportion of their income on energy; others

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  • New Thinking: The IGov institutional framework for energy governance

    July 9, 2019

    New Thinking: The IGov institutional framework for energy governance

    The IGov institutional framework for energy governance: Co-ordinated national and local governance of electricity, heat and energy services Catherine Mitchell, Rebecca Willis, Richard Hoggett, Tom Pownall, Richard Lowes, Jess Britton 9th July 2019* Since 2012, the IGov research project has examined how the energy system is governed, in GB and elsewhere, and what changes are necessary to bring about a secure, fair, zero-carbon system. In this blog, we bring together our proposals for the institutional frameworks that we argue are required. IGov has already published (in draft form) its proposals for the institutional framework at

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  • MOOC: Reflections on People, Scale and Society

    July 8, 2019

    MOOC: Reflections on People, Scale and Society

    Transforming Energy Systems – why governance matters  Reflections on Week 3 – People, Scale and Society 8th July 2019 In our third week we looked at action at different scales and the roles people can play in transforming our energy system; this has prompted more busy and interesting discussions on a variety of topics. Hopefully, by now you feel ready to talk about what governance changes are needed in order to bring about the rapid, decarbonising system change we need. Demand reduction The issue of demand reduction has come up a few times in this

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  • New Thinking: Governance for local energy transformations

    July 3, 2019

    New Thinking: Governance for local energy transformations

    Governance for local energy transformations Jess Britton, IGov Team, 3rd July 2019* It is an understatement to say that there has been a refocussing on local level coordination in energy system change. I have written before about the momentum at this scale, as well as the renewed attention of Local Enterprise Partnership (LEPs) and emerging Local Industrial Strategies in this area. There has also been the announcement of major demonstrator funding for smart, local energy systems via the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. But despite these developments there remains a significant mismatch between activity at this

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  • MOOC: Reflections on Emerging Energy Systems

    July 1, 2019

    MOOC: Reflections on Emerging Energy Systems

    Transforming Energy Systems – why governance matters Reflections on Week 2 – Emerging Energy Systems 1st July 2019 Week 2 of our course has continued to raise multiple comments. From our perspective, we are trying to lay out the system and the way it is operated, its features and so on so that the more detailed stuff about how people interact with energy (week 3) and what governance changes need to happen (week 4) are understandable. The format of these online course mean that we have to take decisions about what we talk about –

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